Bahia court convicts clerk who severed foot in payout fraud

Judges at the Court of Justice of Bahia convicted a 26-year-old administrative assistant for fraud after he intentionally severed his own right foot to secure R$ 1.5 million from private insurance policies. State authorities initiated the enforcement of his judicial penalty following the formal closure of the appellate lawsuit in Salvador.

The defendant had signed four separate coverage agreements between June and July 2019 with Allianz, Zurich, Tokio Marine, and Sompo to establish an aggregate compensation ceiling of R$ 1.5 million.

He suffered the loss of his lower right limb barely six weeks after formalizing the paperwork and immediately demanded the full contract disbursements. The young assistant claimed that unidentified armed assailants ambushed him, kidnapped him, and severed his extremity during the alleged assault.

Policies secured weeks before severe bodily injury triggered immediate suspicions

Prosecutors argued that the narrow temporal window between the execution of the four multi-million insurance contracts and the subsequent physical mutilation served as decisive evidence to dismantle his defense narrative.

Payment demands reached the four corporate insurers immediately following the physical loss. Defense attorneys petitioned for a complete acquittal by claiming that the case lacked material evidence of intentional self-harm carried out for personal financial gain.

The Bahia judiciary grounded its decision upon detailed forensic reports, official medical examinations, signed insurance policies, and extensive testimony collected throughout the instructional phase of the lawsuit.

Appellate judge points out decisive contradictions in robbery allegations

Appellate Judge Julio Cezar Lemos Travessa established in his prevailing vote that the case files conclusively proved both the authorship and the material execution of the criminal fraud. He dismissed every procedural argument submitted by the defense team.

The rapporteur noted that the civil servant had repeatedly claimed he maintained no known enemies or personal disputes, which made the scenario of an unprovoked, deliberate amputation by anonymous attackers completely implausible.

The university worker failed to specify to investigating police officers what cutting tools the alleged attackers employed to sever his ankle joint, and he provided no concrete operational details regarding the armed ambush. Civil police investigators classified his sworn answers during questioning as evasive.

Officers recovered the man’s intact backpack with multiple personal valuables completely undisturbed right next to the bloodied scene of the alleged violent robbery.

Judge Julio Cezar Lemos Travessa also highlighted the suspicious financial reality that monthly premiums for the four insurance policies consumed almost the entire regular salary earned by the young man through his administrative position at a federal university in Bahia, creating an unsustainable monthly commitment that heavily exceeded his personal disposable income. The disproportionate economic burden contradicted basic household budgeting logic.

The full judicial collegiate endorsed the legal reasoning presented by the rapporteur and upheld the criminal penalty against the university staffer for defrauding the four insurance firms.

State court blocks transfer of criminal appeal to federal magistrates

The defense team filed a special appeal seeking to transfer the final adjudication of the criminal proceedings directly to the Superior Court of Justice in Brasília. The legal motion requested the complete annulment of the state conviction.

The Second Vice President of the Court of Justice of Bahia, Appellate Judge José Alfredo Cerqueira da Silva, officially denied admittance to the federal appeal in 2025.

The senior magistrate explained that the existence of dissenting votes on the regional bench still left procedural room for infringement motions within the state jurisdiction before any national court could intervene. This unexhausted local remedy legally blocked the immediate transfer of the case records to federal judges.

The judicial refusal relied directly upon Precedent 207 of the Superior Court of Justice, an established rule that prohibits appellate review whenever an appellant fails to exhaust every ordinary procedural remedy available in lower tribunals.

The administrative worker commenced serving his criminal sanction in May under an open penitentiary regime converted into alternative rights restrictions. He must strictly fulfill all behavioral conditions mandated by the supervisory criminal execution court in Bahia.

The Bahia court sanction remains active.